Did other people exist outside the garden of eden?

Answer 1

No. Adam and Eve were the first humans that existed and they lived in the garden of eden until they sinned.--------------------------------------------------

Actually the bible says that after Caan killed Abel he was banished to the land of Nod where he took a wife who bore him a son he named Enoch.

The bible gives very little information on the people who lived in Nod, but it is not unreasonable to assume that it was home to some kind of unrelated nomadic tribe who somehow lived outside of the Garden during Adam and Eves life time.

For some reason people typically assume that the bible clearly states that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth and all of us are directly descended from them. However this could not possibly be the case considering the bible also states that Caans son Enoch is the child of a woman from Nod. I would love to see a reasonable explanation of this from a biblical scholar, but have yet to find any rationalization of the discrepancy.

One of the main reasons this question perplexes most people is because they do not actually read the words of the text and assume that Cain found his wife in the land of Nod. But read the text again!

"And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch." (Genesis 4:16-17).

The Bible doesn't say that Cain found his wife in Nod. It says that he went to Nod and then "knew" his wife. . The word 'knew', means that Cain had sexual relations with his wife, who he could have been already married to when he left for Nod. (The word 'knew' is only used in some translations. The New American Standard Bible says "And Cain had relations with his wife...") So... Where did Cain get his wife?

The Bible does tell us "after Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years," and it also tells us that "he had other sons and daughters." (Genesis 5:4 ).

In fact, the genealogy in Genesis 5 records that every descendant of Adam down to Lamech had "other sons and daughters," some born to men who were on the wrong side of 180 years. People up to this point in Biblical history had very long life spans thereby substantially increasing their childbearing years, which means there could have been a out-and-out population explosion in a relatively short period of time.

If Eve's childbearing years were about 500 and they had their first child at about the age of 50 and another child every five years, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he had sisters from whom he picked a wife even before he left. However had he waited to marry until he was about 200 years old, he probably had more than a few women to choose from, some of whom could have left for Nod before he did. In fact the world's population could have approached a few billion by the time of Adam's death at the age of approximately 900, and at least 120,000 people could have been alive on earth within only a few hundred years. The math is simple....

Answer 2

According to The Bible, other people are believed to have existed outside the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were considered the first humans to have inhabited the Garden of Eden, but other human civilizations are mentioned later in the biblical narrative.